Jul 282012
 

TheMadIsraeli took the heat for introducing us to the UK’s Hacktivist back in January (this post). Took the heat . . . because rap and djent. That’s mainly what the Hacktivist guys are doing, and that’s not exactly what the NCS community is all about.

But the 83 comments on that earlier post weren’t all heat, and I for one kinda liked what I heard on that previous video, “Cold Shoulder”. Liked it enough that I kept my eyes open for something new, and knew that something new was coming, and within the last hour it arrived: the band’s new video for a new song called “Unlike Us”.

I like this new song even more than the first one. I like the pneumatic punch, the fleeting electronics, the ratcheting melody, the machine-gun-fire rhythmics, and the booming tone on those low strings. I liked the vocals, too, though usually I have a low tolerance for rap.

I headbanged, too.

Okay, you know what the Comment section is for. I got my flame-retardant underwear on. Video follows the jump, and you can follow Hacktivist on Facebook here. Continue reading »

Jul 282012
 

Just sitting around on this Saturday morning, no real desire to get off my ass and go outside because it’s another dank Pacific Northwest summer day (the rental rates for sunshine have apparently gone way up), and so I’m just poking around the interhole, waiting for something to gnaw off one of my fingers, because if you’re not risking your fingers in your personal hobbies then you ain’t playing with the right kind of people or equipment.

Success!!! I lost the first knuckle to Profanal and the second one to Serpentine Path. Fortunately, my middle finger is still intact, cuz I need that one for communication purposes, and I’ve still got the index finger on my left hand for vigorous nose-picking, plus I’ve got the blood flow pretty well stanched now, so my keyboard is only slightly sticky, which is just the way I like it.

PROFANAL

I found this band through a Facebook link by the awesome Blasphemophagher. Like Blasphemophagher, Profanal are from Italy. Since 2007, they’ve released a couple of demos and a couple of splits (with Funeral Whore and Obscure Infinity), but they’re apparently working on a debut album. Last week, they premiered a new track from the album called “Black Chaos Horde”, and it vaulted this new album right onto my gotta-listen list.

Yes, I’ve heard music like this many times before — the music of Nihilist, Entombed, Dismember, Grave, Asphyx, Autopsy, and, well, you get the idea. But when it’s done well, that music never gets old for me — and Profanal do it really fuckin’ well. Continue reading »

Jul 282012
 

This may look like a big hole in the ground, but I have it on good authority that there is something underneath, something that’s rhythmically thrusting toward the surface, like Titans in the Earth in the throes of a mad coupling, grinding and pumping and heaving through the magma, smashing and slapping wetly in the crush and grind of godlike pelvises, the heat of their passion bursting upward like superheated steam exploding through volcanic vents, gargantuan roars of ecstasy rumbling through miles of bedrock as they push and pound toward our frail civilizations, almost ready to spew the black effluvium of their creation over the Earth, engulfing the tiny fleshlings of this feeble world with the magisterial dankness of the great rising, the dark tower that is becoming, the glistening, spiked shaft of our undoing.

Fuck, where was I?

Oh yeah, there’s this thing called The Monolith. They want your e-mail address. Something to do with your personal survival. Warnings about what is coming as it rises. Go here and give ’em what they want now, because what you may have to pay later as a sign of your obedience may be much, much worse.

There.  I’ve done it.  I’m safe now.  The rest of you are on your own.

Jul 282012
 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Metalheads are geeks. Even the ones who may not seem geeky on the surface, you talk to them for a bit and the geekery will come out. It’s just hiding right beneath the surface.

Okay, well maybe this isn’t true of the violent offenders who are in prison and would just as soon rape you as look at you, but all the rest — geeks. That includes me, mind you, and every other metalhead I know. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, because frankly, every friend I’ve got is a geek in some way. If you don’t agree, then try to convince me otherwise through rational argument (I’m not gonna suggest that you fight me, because . . . duh . . . I’m a fuckin’ geek!).

Thanks to our buddy Phro, I have found a geek anthem. Undoubtedly, there are other geek anthems, but I do like this one. It’s catchy and funny and you can understand the words, and I think understanding the words really is essential for a song to be an anthem, because if you can’t sing along, then it really isn’t an anthem, is it?

The only problem is that it’s not metal. I’ve tried to think of a metal geek anthem, and nothing is coming to mind, maybe because in most of the metal I like, you can’t understand the fuckin’ words. So if you have a metal geek anthem in mind, leave a comment. In the meantime, I’m goin’ with this one. It’s called “I’m the One That’s Cool”. Continue reading »

Jul 272012
 

I watched some of the opening ceremonies from London. Some of it was cool, like the cascade of lights falling from those big gold rings in the sky. But I gave up not long after Mr. Bean accompanied the orchestra on the theme song from Chariots of Fire.

I decided if I was going to watch spectacle, with big throngs of people, lots of lights, and explosions of sound, I should at least watch something with good fuckin’ music going on. So I watched these instead:
 


Continue reading »

Jul 272012
 

Among all the many genres of metal, melodic death metal was my personal pathway into the realms of extreme music. Although I eventually branched off in more dissonant and atonal directions, I still get off on that first love.

Mors Principium Est is one of the melodic death metal bands whose albums I go back to for a periodic fix. When I found out that guitarist and primary songwriter Jori Haukio had split from the band soon after release of their last album (2007’s Liberation = Termination), I worried about their future. Second guitarist Jarkko Kokko also left, and my worries were exacerbated when time passed and it seemed like MPE was having no luck in finding a new guitar tandem that would be the right fit for the band.

Well, it seems like the problem has finally been solved. Venturing outside their native Finland, MPE have found two new guitarists in British musician Andy Gillion and New Zealand-based guitarist Andhe Chandler. The new line-up is now finally recording a new album, and they’ve signed contracts with AFM Records for release of the album in Europe and the U.S., with Truth Inc Records for release in Australia, and with Marquee Records/Avalon for Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. WIth luck, we’ll see MPE’s first album in five years by the end of 2012.

Usually, I avoid posting news piece unless I have something tangible to go along with them, such as new album art or new music. Here, I don’t have either. All I have is a new promo photo, in which drummer Mikko Sipola seems to be using the great outdoors as it was intended, i.e., as a giant urinal. So, although we have no new song to stream, I guess we do have a stream.

Hell, we must have musics! So, after the jump, I’ve added a couple of MPE tracks from Liberation = Termination. Continue reading »

Jul 272012
 

(In this latest edition of THE SYNN REPORT, Andy Synn reviews the two bloodthirsty albums by Denmark’s Crocell.)

Recommended for fans of: Amon Amarth, God Dethroned, Bloodbath

So here’s the thing. Well, two things actually. Firstly, I noticed that a good number of the recent Synn Reports have been of a black metal – type, as are many of the ones I have planned for the future. Secondly, my original plan for this edition was not only another black metal – based band, but was also taking me a lot longer to write-up than I intended. So bearing these two things in mind, I decided to re-shuffle things a bit and bash out a different Report than the one I had originally planned, just to give you a bit of variety.

There you go, preamble over. Here’s some death metal.

Formed in Aarhus in 2007, the Danish quintet Crocell deal in concrete-heavy slabs of prime melodic death metal beef. Heavy on the groove and spiced up with darkly melodic lead lines, they’ve produced two albums so far, 2008’s The God We Drowned and last year’s follow-up The Wretched Eidola, while also maintaining a remarkably stable core line-up throughout.

Towing a fine-line between crushing death metal extremity and surprising accessibility, one can find similarities with perennial NCS-faves A Hill To Die Upon in their mix of earth-shaking death metal groove and dark, subtle melody, while their aggressive, blasphemous lyrical outlook should suit fans of Deicide perfectly. Even fans of The Crown will get their goods here, as the relentless, jet-propelled drumming work-out of each song meshes seamlessly with their precise, yet powerful volleys of lethal riffage. Continue reading »

Jul 272012
 

I’m a big fan of Eliran Kantor’s artwork. The guy is just tremendously talented. And so I haunt his Facebook page to keep tabs on his new creations. This morning, I saw that he had uploaded the artwork above. It’s an homage to HP Lovecraft — a kind of Shoggoth / Shub-Niggurath/ Cthulhu hybrid. It’s the cover for an album by a band I’d never heard of called Dublin Death Patrol.

I assumed this was some new Irish metal band, but I was wrong. The “Dublin” in Dublin Death Patrol refers to the town of Dublin, California, population 46,000+, located about 25 miles east of Oakland. Many of the band’s 11 members are Dubliners. And yes, you read that right: 11 members.

But look who’s included in DPP’s membership: Chuck Billy (Testament), Steve “ZETRO” Souza (ex-Testament, ex-Exodus), Willy Lange (Rampage, Laaz Rockit), two of Chuck Billy’s brothers (Andy and Eddie), Steve Souza’s brother John, and a bunch of other East Bay ragers (Steve RobelloGreg BustamanteDanny CunninghamTroy Luccketta, and John Hartsinck). It’s definitely a “family and friends” kind of band. You get one guess as to what kind of metal they play.

All of these guys have apparently known each other since they were teenagers. They’ve recorded two albums. One of them, DDP4Life (2005), apparently had some kind of limited release on a label called Godfodder, but the second one — Death Sentence (2011) — has never been released. But as a result of some internet sleuthing after seeing that Eliran Kantor cover art, I discovered that Mascot Records will be releasing both of the DDP albums on August 13 (they’re taking pre-orders here). Continue reading »

Jul 272012
 

Good morning class. Our subject for today is that well-known romantic ballad by Cannibal Corpse, “I Cum Blood”.

Of course, many of you know this gentle ode like the palm of your hand. But please raise those hands — how many of you have ever read the lyrics?

I thought so. This is the problem with our instant-gratification society. You consume music so quickly and superficially. You get the quick headbang and then move on, without delving more deeply into the philosophical underpinnings of the artist’s inspiration and the nuances of the lyrical message. You miss the opportunity for personal growth that comes from a thoughtful exegesis of the words. You hear the noise and miss the poetry. This will not do.

To correct your shortcomings in music appreciation, we are privileged to have with us today Professor Big C, who will deliver for us a spoken-word recital of the lyrics to “I Cum Blood”.

It goes without saying that you have also neglected the heart-felt lyrical message in that classic Dying Fetus song, “Homicidal Retribution”, with its passionate protest against a justice system that allows killers to escape their just deserts. This tune, which appears on War of Attrition (2007), is one of your instructor’s favorite Dying Fetus ballads, and we are fortunate that the Relapse Records label has uploaded to YouTube for the first time a high-quality version of the official video for this masterwork. It was filmed at Philadelphia’s historic Eastern State Penitentiary. You will wish to familiarize yourself with its environs, because many of you are undoubtedly headed for similar accommodations.

After you have reflected upon Professor Big C’s rendition of “I Cum Blood”, your next assignment will be to absorb the “Homicidal Retribution” video and write a 2,000-word essay on what it means to you. You may not use the words “fuck”, “fucking”, “awesome”, “shit”, “cum”, or “splooge” in your essay. Continue reading »

Jul 272012
 

thedowngoing are a two-man band from Sydney, Australia. Their new EP is entitled ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS. Obviously, they have no patience or use for spaces. Spaces would only interrupt the run-on pile-up of letters. There are also few spaces in the band’s music. Spaces would only interrupt the run-on pile-up of noize and unhinged vocalization that erupts from the album like sulfuric acid and brimstone spewing from a high-pressure firehose.

I first heard about this band as a result of a 2011 year-end list by Alex Layzell (Grind To Death) that we posted last December (here). In that article, Alex was singing the praises of thedowngoing’s Untitled EP. More recently, he’s been singing the praises of ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS, so I decided I should check it out.

It doesn’t take long — 12 songs run roughshod through your skull in almost exactly 10 minutes, leaving a smoking wreckage of pulp in place of what used to be your brain.

The stringed instruments are so distorted that they sound like a combination of industrial-strength sandblasters and the ongoing explosion of an overloaded transformer. The drumming bolts from recognizable rhythms to sheer off-the-hook mayhem, one freaked-out detonation of percussion after another. The vocals are as utterly and completely deranged as any I’ve ever heard, with high-pitched shrieking that could not possibly leave any normal set of vocal chords intact and gruesome growls that would frighten bears. Continue reading »